Part 3: Essential Account Planning [Webinar]

Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. I'm Mark Danolo, managing partner at Sales Globe, and we are in the middle of our series on account planning, and we're talking about the book Essential Account Planning. And today we're talking about a really cool topic which is using the right structure for your strategy. You know, we get into looking at the account plan as the document. We start talking about the table of contents, and we talk about all the pieces that go into it, and we kind of want to just get it done, but it's really about the whole process, and it's about how account planning fits into the strategy of the organization. So we're going to be talking about that today and digging into this whole process approach and the vision and the strategy and of course, the big pieces that go into the account plan. Today we have our guest, Todd Abbott. Todd is EVP of Sales and services at mitel. And I've worked with Todd over the years and have been really impressed and at his speed and his intellect, in fact, he's one of the fastest clients I've ever worked with. So I think we're going to have a fun conversation today. And Todd, I want to welcome you to our webinar. Thanks for joining us today.

It's good to be here, Mark.

So I want to start out, Todd, talking about some bigger things like vision and strategy. And in the organizations that you work with, when you create a vision for account planning, you don't just kind of, you know, have people jump in and do it, but how do you get the vision set initially and get people to understand what it means within the context of the overall sales strategy?

Yeah, I think so. What I've always kind of fallen back on is having been a sales guy early in my career. I think the important part of any vision is to. Is to really have it relatable. Account manager, SE channel Account manager. The hardest part is to get the collective team to understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. If I can get them to understand what we're doing as a company and why we're doing it, then I like to refer to it as that really capturing the mind. And if you capture the mind, then you got a better opportunity to capture the heart, because what people want to do is align to a collective vision. And so whenever we work on where we want to take the company, it has to be back down to the basics of what do I as a rep, how do I connect to that, and how do I translate it to a strategy within my own Territory. I think before you ever get to any account planning, you have to understand as a rep, what, what's my role? How do I contribute to make this a great company? And it all starts with the strategy of the company that has to be relatable down to the territory level. Because at the end of the day, what we want are our account managers to focus on the components of the territory that are relevant and tied to the company strategy. I don't want people just throwing in, you know, to use the fishing analogy, just throwing in hooks in lots of different ponds. I want them to focus on the ponds that are most particular to collectively contributing to the success of the company. And to do that, they have to understand what we're doing and why.

So with the account planning, if you take the overall sales strategy, are you doing account plans just for the biggest accounts or how do you help your organization figure out where they need to focus their efforts?

Yeah, so I think, you know, for the bigger accounts it's definitely account plan and for the smaller and medium it's territory planning. And they all have some different elements to it. You know, clearly for the larger accounts, you can spend a lot more time under really immersing into the company, the customer strategy versus as you get into the small or medium, it then tends to become much more about a market segments strategy. But they all, they both play into the, back into what we're trying to do and why. Because at the end of the day, an account strategy is all about trying to correlate a value proposal to a customer's strategy so that, so that we have a relationship and frankly, they buy more goods and services from us. It all has to connect to what are they trying to do and what are we trying to do? And I just kind of always viewed my role as helping people understand where do I want them to fish, right? Where do I want them to dig a. Well, whatever analogy you want to use. Yeah, there's opportunistic opportunities out there, but time is everything. It's the most precious commodity. And I want them to focus their time on the most relevant markets and accounts that are going to correlate to our success against the strategy we've laid out.

So how do you, or who gets that message across initially? Because there's, I would imagine, a big message about, hey, here's what we're going to do. And everybody goes, oh God, I've done account planning before, I don't want to do this again. Here we go. I've got to just kind of get through, get through all the pain. But is that message ultimately coming from the chief sales officer initially or where does that come from to make people take notice and know that this is really important to the business?

Yeah. No, I mean ultimately I have to, as the chief sales officer, have to be the. It won't stick if it doesn't resonate down to the first line sales manager. I've learned that no matter how many layers and levels I have in the organization, I have to connect with the first line manager. Because if the first line manager is kind of rolling their eyes, it's the strategy of the year or it's a corporate initiative of the year. If they can't correlate it back to the strategy and they don't feel part of it, they can't intellectually buy in. So I spend a fair amount of time at the first line level, in essence managing and communicating through the organization. What tends to happen is the people between me and the first line sales manager then come along for the ride and buy in. But I have to communicate directly with the first line. So whenever we roll out a new strategy or new components to the strategy, there are always many direct sessions. Like as an example, and when I do a sales kickoff, I always do a management only session the day before. And we spend a day helping that team really understanding the update to the strategy. I want them intellectually to be part of it. That to me is the most critical component.

Yeah. So you're reaching out and I think this is an important distinction. You're reaching out to the front line. So you're making the chief sales officer connection to the front line. So you're getting them engaged and then you're also working through the sales leader. So you're not just asking the sales managers or the sales directors to hey, take this, take this forward and you know, communicate the message. You're working two levels there at least.

At least. So my direct reports are very much part of the strategy development process. It's not like they're hearing it for the first time. But I really want the first line manager for me. I want an unfiltered message. It's not. They don't have trust and confidence in my team. But I've learned never to risk the time delay of having a filtered message get through and only finding out months or a quarter later that it was a filtered message and it wasn't articulated as well. I want them to hear directly from me. And it's a two way exchange. It's not, it's not a one day Meeting. Hey, here it is. We make those sessions. I want them to truly understand. So as I tell them, go, create, communicate a strategy that says, you know, I want this to be your strategy. So we spend a lot of time intellectually forms for them to dialogue so they can own it. If they own it, then I've got a much greater opportunity of it sticking and us really getting some traction in the industry.

So as the chief sales officer, when you talk to somebody on the front line and sales organizations are jaded a lot about account planning, but what things do you hear back? Do you ever get any good feedback in terms of, hey, here's something I should think about versus I'm just communicating the message and they're all being good soldiers and they're just marching ahead. What do you hear back from the front line?

Yeah, I mean I've heard all of the feedback. I was part of the feedback. Oh gosh, another corporate initiative. Here we go. I think the key part of how we roll out account planning and territory planning is to really spend the time to help understand, you know, what's in it for them, how is this going to make them more effective. Kind of all goes back to that time pressure component. Want their time to be as productive as possible. And so, you know, my message to the field is, listen, there's two elements of account planning that, that, that benefit you. One is I'm going to make you a better, a better territory manager, account manager. I was as skeptic as they may be in the room, but let me, I take them through examples, my own personal experience, how does this make them more productive? But the second thing that I think is often missed is how do I help them align the rest of the company to support them in the execution of that strategy. Because the other key piece of this is if you get everybody in the field communicating the same vernacular back into plm, back into marketing to an executive sponsor, the faster we get everybody speaking in the same vernacular allows the rest of the company to align so much more effective. And so what I tell them, what's in it for them is I'm going to make you a better territory, better sales rep, whether it's strategic or territory. But I'm also going to get you much better and support of your strategy cross functionally in the company.

So I think a great point you're bringing out here is you're appealing to the hearts of, of the sales organization. We had a session earlier where we talked about getting people motivated and thinking big. And a lot of that is visceral it's getting people to envision where they could be. But I imagine there's some of that as well, which is getting people to think hey, this is beyond just kind of going through the exercise, it's beyond the document. This is something that's going to really benefit me and it's going to help me in my career if I do it well.

Absolutely. If you can't connect at that level, then it's just another corporate program. And, and we've all grown up through big or small companies and had the corporate initiative. I certainly have seen it. I never want to just co execute a corporate initiative to connect with them on what we're doing and why as I tell the rest of the the sales rep is the most expensive resource in the company by far. And so everything we have to do is to make that, enable that rep to be much more effective in representing the company and translating a strategy to the customer. And so any program that we roll out that I can't connect with them viscerally, to use your term, as to how this is going to help them more effective, then frankly I won't communicate it then it is just in the corporate program and we put a hard stop there. Connect at that level. And I tell the team in the field aspect to the way I run my teams is that if you, if somebody is communicating a new program or a new message, you as an entrepreneur of your territory, if it's not going to help you sell more, create more value, be more effective at representing the company, then you got to say no, say no, don't, don't, don't go execute the plan. Your time is the most precious commodity. I don't want you just running a play because somebody in corporate thinks it's a good play.

Yeah. And so let's talk for a second about culture if we can. Because a lot of people don't like.

To do account planning.

We talked about that a little bit. They would rather be out in the field, they'd rather be out in front of customers. And that tends to be one of the big resistance points on account planning is I'd rather be out there doing something rather than sitting in a conference room thinking right. And kind of going through this planning process. But you, you've led several major sales organizations and I've got to think when you've come into these organizations, you've dealt with different types of cultures and what do you do if you come in and there's a culture that is just not accepting of that they've Never done it before. And you've got to not just deal with a few people, you got to deal with a whole organization that's not used to doing something like that. How do you get them to move?

I think it goes right back to what I said before. It's the first line sales manager. If I can't get the first line sales manager to fundamentally believe this is a good use of his or her time and their sales team's time, then it will never work. And so I just always view that first line as the critical. So what we spend a fair amount of time is educating, is dialoguing with that team as to what great sales regions look like and what great sales plans look like. And then we spend a great deal of time making sure that 9 out of 10 times the correlation from the people that implement it effectively, 9 out of 10 times, they're the ones that outperform. And so you have to connect the dots as to what great looks like, what the leverage was for people that embrace and implement these approaches and philosophies into their plans, how it correlates to success. So I will spend a fair amount of time educating what other companies, what I have learned many times I'll get skeptics and I'll. And I'll appeal to them. Listen, I know you're skeptical, but let's give it a shot because in my experience, this works. But let's walk before we run and then correlate as quickly as possible the successes through the process so that it gains momentum. But at some point, what I'll also identify is that if a skeptic continues to be a skeptic, there are always going to be a few laggards. There's a difference in a laggard and somebody who is just never going to buy in. And this is why, again, I go back to spending so much time with the first line. If I have first lines that are just going to resist, then they might not be the right fit culturally. But there's a difference between being somebody who resists and somebody who's a laggard intellectually. A laggard intellectually is not a bad thing. Some people, everybody grows at different, learns at different paces. But inevitably you got a few really quick studies, quick adopters, and those are the ones that are leading the pack, and those are the ones that give you the success stories to go, then further reinforce the message to the laggards. But then you were the resistors, not laggards. And the resistors, frankly, have to go.

So you've got a.

Go ahead.

You got a few different pressure points here, which I think you're laying out. One is you talk about leadership message at the very top. So you've got to have the right message. Then you're talking about the first line sales manager. So that's kind of the linchpin for making this all happen. They're the ones that are seeing what's going on every day in the field. So that's another pressure point. And then demonstration. And I've seen this before as well. Demonstration is a great pressure point because people see, wow, John is growing that account. What's he doing? Well, he's doing this whole planning process. So if I see other people like me that are doing it, I can identify with it and I go, okay, well maybe I should be doing that as well. The last one we haven't talked about though is around motivation or reward. And we always pay for results, we pay for performance. But if you're in a long process and say you're developing a really large account or a large partner and you're not seeing the results near term, that's not what you expect. How do you keep people engaged? How do you keep them motivated? Are there ways to do that either monetarily or non monetarily to help them feel successful, even though it's a long road?

So I have never had to use. So here's the way I look at motivation. I mean from a sales standpoint, you want a coin operated, money motivated sales team, but if you have a good core sales compensation plan, then I've never had the need to add additional MBO or components to drive specific behaviors. The company. My philosophy is the compensation is always on the end result. The other way to motivate though is through inspection, is through ongoing engagement. And that inspection isn't necessarily coming at it with a bat, but it's inspecting what you expect. And so it's literally as simple as when I get a special discount approval, when I go out and make a sales call, when I'm called on for an escalation. Just asking, okay, so where are we on the plan? Why are we asking for this discount? What's the strategy for me to go engage with this customer? And, and so through that process I learned how much thought process that team has really put through and goes back to the common nomenclature. If somebody can communicate to me, here's the customer's current business situation. Here is what we're focused on, here's our value prop. Here are the three things I want to do I want you to do in the sales call, then I know that team has embraced. If I come into, you know, conversely, if I come in for an executive call or an escalation and that team is just kind of giving me the, you know, that just off the top of their head, it's a relationship call and they just need to know you're important. Yeah, but I need to know like what's their business? And if I can't, if they can't correlate with that with me, well, then it becomes a coaching session. I then really reinforce I can't be as effective for you. This customer may see me once, twice a year. You've got to maximize the opportunity. You've got to give me the, the core understanding of what's going on and what's our value prop. What's your strategy? Because I can't perform for you, I can't support your strategy. And so there'll be some positive reinforcement and coaching through that process. And if in fact they, I then have subsequent escalations and calls from them and they're not buying into it, then I go back to the first line, this first, this individual is not buying in. This is now the third call, the fourth escalation, the fourth special discount where there's not an underlying strategy. And then that becomes a discussion of, okay, so how are you doing first line manager and coaching them? Is this an individual that's resisting or is it the first line manager that's not doing a good enough job coaching? So that inspection process to me is way more valuable than frankly any compensation components to it.

So let's talk about some kind of nuts and bolts things. I think the inspection is a really valuable point in terms of getting out there and working with people. They're within the process. And my question is, what is a good process? You see, teams do the account plans. They may meet a couple times to get it done. But what's a good process? How long should it take to develop a great plan?

Well, that's highly dependent upon the quality of the rep and any plan. You know, so when you talk about the first strategy session, I mean a good account plan, obviously, depending upon the size of the account, can be done in a half text of as long as there's some prep work done. Because there's. It's not, hey, let's assemble everybody and go create a plan. There's clearly some prep work that that lead reps got to do. He or she has got to go study that account, go listen to some quarterly Calls, go look at the analyst, go look at their annual report, what are their hot buttons, what are their business issues, what are their competitive pressures? How does our technology help them address some of their key strategic initiatives and then having some of the engagements with the key sponsors and the accounts to really understand what's going on in the business and how do we correlate. So if the prep work is done then a good one day planning session can be more than effective. Now I've been part of some big accounts that it can be a couple day effort where you bring in some, some facilitators to help a broader team through that process. So it really depends on obviously on the size of the account in the smaller ones. What you really want to do is teach the teachers. I'll teach those first line managers to drive those sessions. We've also done some things where we've had some cross pollination, where I've got some really good leading best of breed sales guys and say listen, I need you to step in and why don't you go lead this, be a facilitator for this session for another account team. And so it just kind of permeates through the organization. So I've always had a mix of bring some outside consultants in to get the process going, maybe do the more complex ones and then it's, it just keep, keeps going back to the same thing. It's the first line sales manager, that sales manager knows how to, how to coach and teach because I tell my first line sales managers, listen, your number one job is to hire, develop and retain people and the develop piece is the key component. So if, if you're not embracing this account planning as a coaching vehicle for your team, you're learning about, about what the portfolio business I have in my territory but I'm also coaching a sales rep how to be a better consultative sales rep through that process. And so they have got to embrace this or fundamentally there's no way they can do what the critical functions they have which is recruit, develop and retain the team. If you teach them then retention is an easy thing because they're going to make money, they're learning, they're growing and in fact you got a successful team which then feeds all the way back to I should be able to recruit pretty well because I've got a good solid team and a good prospect process. What always comes back to the first line team, I keep coming back to it, I apologize but to me that's the critical success component.

So I'd imagine you, you know, you do the account plan. And maybe it takes a day to do that, but I would imagine when you're working with the managers, you're working with the reps during the year, you expect to see that account plan living 100% back out.

Yeah. So. And it feeds right back into if I'm coming out or what we do is we go teach all the executives. Every. Every executives got a set of executive sponsorship or ch, partnership accounts. They're also expected to get out on the road and make calls. And so we build that into the call sheet, the one sheet. Okay, here's who you're going to meet. Here are the hot buttons. Here's the strategy, here's what I need you to do. And it all feeds back to that common nomenclature. And frankly, I can pick up a call sheet and know right away how effective the underlying account strategy and account plan is. Having done this a long time, you can just pick up that call sheet and literally in two or three minutes have a dialogue to know if that individual, that rep, has really thought through the strategy. And so I get all of my peer executives understanding the nomenclature and what to expect. And then if they're not getting that, feed it back through the management team to understand. Do we have a first line that's continuing to teach the discipline. So it becomes a continuous loop. And I find that's way more effective than any cash component compensation for account planning. We make it a required discipline to be successful. Yep.

Motivation through management, not necessarily the money, because that'll come later. I want to ask you this question, which is. And it may be a little tough because you run sales for a unified communications company, but how important is it to get people, especially for a really big account, to get people into a room together to work on this, or can that really be done virtually?

Yeah, again, I think it depends on the size and the complexity of the account. For the bigger ones, I think there's nothing that replaces getting into a room, but typically that's kind of upfront. And then we leverage technology team collaboration. So each of these teams or accounts would have typically a living virtual room. And that list.com is also the critical workflow coordination across. But we also have team collaboration that we put in, which is. Think of it as. It's an ongoing living virtual room where people can post things. It's an ongoing chat session. I might have just come out of a call. Yeah, I want some stuff within Salesforce from an ongoing account management, but I may also want a discussion. And so those virtual teams then have an Ability to kind of, kind of keep the evolution of the account plan living and breathing. You know, they can share documents, they can share white papers, they can immediately get on an impromptu call because they see who's online from Active Directory. And so the more you can keep it alive. And if I'm a virtual member of a critical team, because it's, I'm an executive sponsor or, or I'm a PLM and it's a critical situation for my product, I can always just pop into that room and just kind of go back and look through the logistics or the communications and just immediately get a pulse what's going on or maybe even add to the conversation. So the more you can virtualize this, given we're so disparate, I'm no different than many, many companies, the more you virtualize the team so that you've got all of the leverage of the different skill types and functions in the company, the more effective you are. And that also just kind of feeds this underlying foundation which is the account reps got to drive the strategy to that account plan.

So you just added a really big component here to the structure, right? So we think about the account plan document, we think about how it fits within the overall strategy, the organization, the idea of a virtual place or a virtual room, I mean that keeps the whole account planning process alive. If I can go to a room, you bet. And I can see information and I can collaborate and it's all about that account, that's, that's a really living entity.

You bet. You bet. And think about it as a first line sales manager, you can see who's running the play, who's running the strategy by having access to these rooms. And also it's another vehicle to see what's going on kind of behind the scenes to be able to contribute to the discussion, to be able to coach. Hey, you got an issue? You know, your peer on account, XYZ had that same issue. You might want to go check with them because here's what they did, right? So. And for a product manager, any product manager knows who the critical accounts are for their product to be able to keep a pulse and what's going on in each of the key opportunities. You know, it's just invaluable, right? So you move away from the event driven alignment to living, breathing it almost the way I like to explain it to people is that in the old world, right, we're all part of the same office or part of the same Johnny. Hey, I got a question. But now Johnny and Sally are Remote. And so how do you create that same productivity dynamic of walking down the hall now, just going into the room and Sally's online. Hey Sally, talk to me about this. Let me, I want to share something with you. And so you just create this ongoing collaboration with different teams. So I have some team that are ongoing around a project and some that are around a function. So if we're driving a big transformational component. So here's a good example, I may say, you know, we're going to drive account planning and we're going to do it in these verticals. And so I'm going to create a vertical of the first line managers that have this vertical and drive the discipline of account planning from a vertical orientation within this room. And it might just be the managers. Here's what I'm learning, here's what I'm struggling with. I can keep a pulse on it, say okay guys, we're struggling this now two, three times. Let's bring in you Mark to help the team get over this and reteach some of those concepts. So it allows us to kind of keep a living, breathing, continuous improvement process and allows us as a leadership team to spot those issues where we can come in and help that team embrace and get over some of the obstacles much more effectively.

So last two questions, both kind of rapid response here since we're running a little tight on time. But I want to ask both, they both would be very helpful. How do you involve the customer, Todd, in the process and how does that help the customer think differently about the team if they're putting maybe some big goals out in front of the customer that they hadn't thought of before?

Yeah. So I've included the team quite often in some of the largest accounts. What we would typically do in those situations, many times I'd have them come in and kick off the session with an hour of hey, what are we dealing with as a customer? And also a candid assessment on how they view us as a partner or vendor. Depending upon the status on where we are. I would then very often. So to have to kick off and start the session can be incredibly valuable. I've done two different approaches on the back end. Either have them come in on the back end on a day and a half, two day session to, to do a readout or then have a follow up session with either the executive sponsor, certainly the first time manager and the rep have a follow up session to do a readout on. Here's our strategy. I don't view that an account engagement strategy is a confidential document, certainly from your executive sponsor in the account or your key key executive decision maker. I think the more open and transparent you are as to what we're trying to do to help you as a customer, I think that's all good. And so a readout of what we have aligned on as a team to help enable that customer or that executive I think is a highly valuable component. Great.

So last question. If you're going to give one piece of advice to a sales executive who is going to do a better job of account planning their organization, what one thing would you tell them to do?

I'm going to give you two One, you can't it's not a program that you can't live and breathe and really get behind. And I think the only way you can do that is the second thing is you've got to engage with the first line directly. First lines want to be part of a team that they understand what we're doing and why we're doing to make it a great company. And that has to come from the chief executive. And the more you personalize that down to that first line, in my experience, the more effective it's going to be embraced and acted upon and translate to results. Great.

Well, thank you, Todd. Todd Abbott, CVP of Global Sales and Services at mitel. Todd, thanks for joining us today. I think this has been great insight. I think everybody's gonna learn something from this and be able to take something away.

Great. Nice to spend some time with you.

And thanks everybody for joining us. You've got your to do list in front of you here. Go ahead and get the book, get your team aligned. It's available on Amazon.com you can also host an essential account planning workshop at your own company and learn about how to do this better. And then join us on the next webinar. It's going to be on May 11 about understanding the politics, which is going to be a juicy topic. We're going to have Jana Schmidt joining us. Jana is president of Harlem Park. Thanks for joining us.